


like ghosts.

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Demons, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Ghosts, Gore, Horror, Revenge, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I promised you a reckoning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like ghosts.

Like ghosts they came out from behind the trees, approaching him from all sides.

Hannibal stopped in place and considered them. He knew he had been followed into the woods, and he was not planning on resisting. He figured they were detectives of some sort, inspectors related to the police, the same ones who had been on his trail ever since he came to this small town.

Furniture in his apartment had been moved around, windows left open and doors unlocked. For the past couple of weeks, Hannibal had been followed and, presumably, investigated by these people. And today, after they took one of his favorite coffee mugs, he had put on a coat and lead them to the woods where he could kill them in some beautiful way. As well as get his mug back.

But when he considered their faces, they were all too familiar.

They stood in a circle around him. They did not move, did not sway in their spot or shuffle their feet. Their impassive faces judged him silently. Their blackened, unblinking eyes looked tired and grim against the cold forest background, but the purple bags and wrinkles under their eyes looked more like they came from bruises instead of tiredness.

In fact, all of their bodies were bruised, red and purple and blue and scarred with violence.

For some reason, the hunters were all starkly detailed and yet like silhouettes of people. People they should definitely not be, people who should not be walking, people who should not be alive. 

Will Graham stepped forward first, and Hannibal experienced the alarming emotion of fear. Alana Bloom joined him, and he was caged in at his right and at his left. They did not reach out to him. They just stood there, and judged.

Behind him, Abigail Hobbs took a step forward. The others, Jack and Beverly and countless tired ghosts beyond death, encircled him. Left on a beach, left in a tree, left in a courtroom, and they have come back to him at last. 

“Hello, Will,” he said, head swiveling around to see them all and coming to rest on the hunter on his right. 

Will did not greet him back. There was a great wound in his stomach that was bleeding profusely, untouched and untreated, but the only smell around him was the smell of pine trees and the last night's rainfall. He spat in Hannibal's face.

In harmony, they walked forward again until they were inches away from Hannibal.

“I promised you a reckoning.” It was not Will's voice. It was hollow, almost wispy, and wilted. Hannibal felt another unwelcome surge of fear. 

“So you did,” he said.

Around him, they began to growl.

As one, they latched onto his body, and they snarled, roared, screamed. His ears were filled with what was likely the sound of Hell, and their dark, dark eyes burned into his skin as they clawed at his coat and his skin.

He couldn't tell whose fingers were digging into his neck, while someone else took a firm hold of him by the elbow and began to pull. His legs gave out, and he braced himself against the cold, wet ground, hands pressed against the damp grass as prying fingers pressed into his eyes. Hands fisted into his hair and jerked him up to face them; his bones gave out a startled cry.

Piece by piece he was claimed by pairs of reaching hands. They were pawing at him, not yet breaking skin, just trying out their teeth on a chew toy. Hannibal felt aware of his flesh, of his skeleton and his body's meat, and he knew too well how easy it was to strip that all away. His heart pounded, his blood rushed, and he blinked at all the familiar faces of people he had murdered.

Their mouths opened once more, but they didn't howl. They let out horrible sobs, something like a hiss and a lament. There were fingers in his eyes again; they dug in harder. Blood trickled down his cheek. 

They waited for his body to give in.

Finally his eye popped, and the finger kept going, up to the knuckle – then two fingers, three fingers, four, five, the blood was warm on his face and they were spreading his eye socket open, into the harsh cold weather that bit at the exposed veins.

At some point, his hands had been pulled behind his back, and now they were pulling again. Hannibal's arms dislocated with loud pops like gunshots, and his lower body began to thrash and flail about at the pain pulsing through his body. 

He gagged on his own tongue, and he tried to focus on not choking on his own spit, until he fainted. They wanted him to die by their own hands, and it was the least he could give Will and the rest. 

But they took the thrashing as signs of struggle, and his legs were quickly snapped and broken. Hannibal went limp as he dropped off into pain-induced unconsciousness. 

Abigail took a hold of one of his ears, and roughly she tore off the outer shell. She thrusted the fold of skin into her mouth, and swallowed.

Collectively, they took to the task of separating his arms from his torso. The skin broke as the bones pushed through, and his arms came off cleanly, except for the resulting spray of blood. None of them seemed to notice.

Each took their own share of his flesh. The skin of his face was sheared off, the bridge of his nose arching over an expanse of muscle and tendons. His other eye was ripped out and crushed in his own jaw. His throat resembled a barb-wire fence, exposed chunks of flesh jagged and loose, splattered across his collarbone.

Hannibal was ugly. He didn't die strung up on a pretty, indecipherable riddle. He did not die by any knife.

They huddled over his corpse, quiet, dirty with red, and then slunk back into the trees like ghosts.


End file.
